Chapter-house

Chapter-House

SEE CHAPTER, an apartment or hall in which the monks and canons of a monastic establishment, or the deans and prebendary of cathedrals and collegiate churches, meet for transacting the business of the body of the society. Chapter-houses were often built in the most magnificent and costly style of architecture. They are of various forms, more usually located contiguous to a church, and often mere places of burial, having occasionally crypts under them.

In mediaeval Latin the chapter-house is denominated capitulum, and also Domus Capitularis. The former term was also applied to the east end of the church (caput ecclesiae), and hence there have been errors of translation.